Dana Schutz Review: An Orgy of Gloop from the Painter Who Shocked New York

The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with allusions. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of a Belgian artist, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by Dana Schutz.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done since exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that ordeal a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.